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Let’s get one thing straight about David Hasselhoff: he knows that people laugh at him, but he doesn’t care as long as he gets the last laugh.

The star of Knight Rider, Baywatch and an infamous video involving a cheeseburger is coming to Toronto for Fan Expo Canada (a.k.a. Comic-Con North) from Aug. 22 to 25 and he’s pumped about it.

“I love these conventions,” said Hasselhoff, 60, on the phone from California. “The people who show up are great. Sure, some of them are geeks, but who else but a geek would love me?”

Well, actually, over the years a lot of people have gone “Hoff Crazy” as he calls it. It started with the housewives who swooned over him on The Young and Restless as Dr. “Snapper” Foster from 1975 to ’82. Then he got a whole new fan base thanks to Knight Rider, where he played Michael Knight from 1982 to ’86. Those are the peeps who will be lining up to see him in Toronto.

But what made Hasselhoff the most money and the biggest name was playing Mitch Buchannon on Baywatch. The beefcake and cheesecake series about the life guards on the L.A. county beaches folded after one season in 1989, but Hasselhoff saw its potential, raised the money, produced it himself and put it back on the air and in syndication for another decade.

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Hasselhoff found a lot of the investment he needed in Germany. “I’m very big in Germany. Very. They loved Knight Rider, so I went to some German bankers for Baywatch. They asked me, ‘Does it haff a car in it?’ ‘No, but it’s got a lot of hot people in bathing suits.’ ‘Almost as gut as a car.’” They signed the cheques.

“It gave the world Pamela Anderson,” jokes Hasselhoff, “and it gave me a couple of million dollars.” Actually, according to many sources, The Hoff wound up earning a personal fortune of $100 million, mainly thanks to Baywatch.

When it finally went off the air, Hasselhoff tried a variety of projects, including acting on Broadway in Jekyll and Hyde, the musical, under the direction of Robin Phillips, but times were a bit lean.

“There’s a funny thing about being on a hit show for a long time. When it ends, people think you died or something. The phone doesn’t ring a lot.”

When it did, it was for spoofy, self-mocking things like his appearance in The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie (2004) and for his often outrageous off-camera behaviour in real life, culminating in a video of him, supposedly intoxicated, rolling on the floor, doing nasty things to a cheeseburger.

“All that stuff is old news to me now,” says Hasselhoff, trying to change the subject. When asked if it’s true he’s been on better behaviour since 2011, he says,“Look, nothing really turned me around. The amount of negative press I got for doing nothing but being human was unfair. But I never kind of addressed that. I just kept moving forward.

“Hollywood is not the pleasantest or fairest of places. But once you realize that it is not fair and that people are going to screw you no matter what, you stop taking it personally and just move forward.”

Fan Expo poll

One of the things that Hasselhoff cheerfully admits has changed his view on things is attending events like the one here in Toronto.

“If I had known how good these things were, I would have started coming to them a long time ago. Barbara Eden was at one next to me. Wow. There I was with I Dream of Jeannie.

“And Christopher Lloyd is always at these things and he is an inspiration to me. We did Piranha 3DD together and believe me, when Lloyd speaks, he makes you hear every single syllable.”

He launches into a very plausible imitation of Lloyd in the final scene of the horror-porn-spoof announcing, “They are spawn-ing and they are go-ing to waaaaaaalk!”

Hasselhoff pauses for a minute. “I know I’m making it all sound like fun and it is, but there’s something touching about it, too. I saw one kid who suffered from muscular dystrophy in his wheelchair, all done up like something out of Star Wars and when I said hi to him, he said, ‘Hey, Hoff, the geeks shall inherit the earth.’

“For one day in his life, he can say, ‘F--- the world, I can dress up like R2D2.’”

The once and future Baywatch king is also anxious to explore the Comic-Con part of the festival because “we’re going to launch the second edition of my comic book there. It’s called The Hoff. And it doesn’t just mean me, it stands for The Heroes of Fearless Freedom.”

Hasselhoff is on a roll as he warms to his subject. “The Hoff lives inside The Hassle Castle. He’s Hoff and running. My career is Hoff crazy!”

A few sample pages show that the comic book is indeed funny, but it’s all at Hasselhoff’s expense.

“Sure, it’s a caricature version of me, but you’ve got to wink at yourself. Look, no one knows the real me. They tell you that truth is everything? Well go on, man, try and find the truth and let me know when you do. I’ll be waiting for a long time.

“Do you know they’re making a documentary about my involvement in East German history? It’s true. Knight Rider was so popular there that they were flinging satellite feeds onto trash-can covers to see it. And then I hit it big over there with my song called ‘Looking for Freedom’ and I wound up singing it on the Berlin Wall. For real.”

He chuckles a little ruefully. “That was my Elvis period and I was doing whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted with whoever I wanted, just because I could. That’s over now.”

A short pause and then The Hoff slips into gear again.

“Nowadays, I kinda do whatever comes along. I take it day by day. I was asked to audition for Les Misérables onstage, but I thought that would be too much real work. I’m opening a hotel in Bali called Bask, with a bar they’re naming ‘Hoff’s Hideaway.’ I’ve got a TV commercial on the air now for Cumberland Farms where I’m singing about their iced coffee. I do it all.

“The funniest thing I’ve got going now is a movie someone wrote called Killing Hasselhoff. It’s about a death pool for celebrities and when this guy can’t get Gary Busey or Lindsay Lohan, he goes after me. Hey, you have to wink at yourself.”

We’re about to hang up when he decides to add one more thought.

“My girlfriend has a magazine she showed to me. It was called Too Soon, all about these people who died way earlier than they should have. John Ritter, John Belushi, Freddie Prinze, that kid from Glee. I don’t want to be part of that list.

“My dream in life is to have a stem-cell replacement so I can live 20 more years. I’m still ready to do it all.”

FIVE FAVE ROLES

Knight Rider

“Everyone wanted to have a friend like me, someone who would take care of them. Hell, don’t we all?”

Baywatch

“That really was a licence to print money and NBC cancelled it after one season. Good thing they did, because I picked it up and ran with it.”

The Young and the Restless

“When you’re on a soap opera five times a week, people think you’re part of their lives. Women would throw themselves at me, thinking I was really that guy. Crazy.”

The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie

“Hey, it put me back in touch with the younger generation of fans and that is so important.”

Jekyll and Hyde

“I loved singing those songs onstage, but you’ve got to show up[ every night, no matter how you’re feeling. I couldn’t handle that.”

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